Highland Cooos

July 5, 2008

**As you can now tell, the blogs may not be posted on the day that they were written in my moleskine notebook. Therefore, I will add the date it actually happened to keep everything clear.

Bobby and my first day in Elie and began with Friday night fish and chips eaten on the harbor. We also shared a white pudding, which is a sausage made with lots of oatmeal (that has also been made in chicken fat) and deep fried. It might sound disgustin but it is an absolute treat for any lover of both meat and fried foods...aka Bobby and I. Bobby had been a true culinary adventurer when he dabbled earlier in the day with his first plate of haggis(a sausage-like mixture of sheeps innards, oatmeal, and black pepper cooked in the stomach of a sheep), neeps (mashed turnips and carrots), and tatties (mashed potatoes). I was very impressed and he declared the dish good.

I have also decided that Elie is officially the one place that I immediately feel at home in. For me, although I have probably only spent a total of 10 months here in my whole life, it is the only place that I have 'lived' in as a baby, toddler, child, and now adult. Nothing has changed about the Elie summer sun that keeps the sky lit until the wee hours of the morning. The rolls from the bakery still have the same dusted flour top, fluffy white interior, and perfectly chewy crust. This tiny village filled with stone cottages, narrow streets, and views of the beautiful coast is one of the few places that seems to never change, even if I do. That, to me, is home.

For our second day we took a wonderful hike between Kings Barnes(another tiny village) and Crail (another tiny village) along the coastline. The hike began with searching for crabs, snails, anemone, and prawns in the rock pools created by the tide. We then walked along a beach littered with dead purple jellyfish, which Bobby convinced my little brother could still sting you afterdeath. We then went through a field of cows (pronounced Highland Coooos - please see pictures). We also explored caves, bridges, old gardens and more beaches before ending up drinking coffees in a tiny, stone coffeeshop in Crail. It was a perfect introduction to the natural wonders of Scotland...and it only rained a few times.